Dead Over Heels

The werewolf is neither man nor wolf, but a satanic creature with the worst qualities of both.

—JOHN COLTON, STUART WALKER

The werewolf instinctively seeks to kill the thing it loves best.

—JOHN COLTON, STUART WALKER

I have led her home, my love, my only friend.

There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood

And sweetly, on and on

Calming itself to the long-wished-for end

Full to the banks, close on the promised good.

—ALFRED TENNYSON, TENNYSON, A SELECTED EDITION

There’s no such thing as a werewolf.

—ERIC SINCLAIR, VAMPIRE KING

For all the Wyndham werewolf fans out

there, this one’s for you. And yes, I’ll

probably do another single title one of

these days. You know, when I kick my

booze and prescription pill habit.

Author’s Note

The events of this novella take place four days after the events in Undead and Uneasy.

Chapter 1

Most people wouldn’t know a werewolf if said werewolf (literally) bit them in the face.

Werewolves look like you or me; perhaps a bit more muscular, yes, and their reflexes are much quicker, but it is the nature of man to not notice such things, and so . . . most people wouldn’t know a werewolf if they saw one.

Not so with Cain.

Cain just looked wrong. Your brain registered it, even if the eye did not. She was short, almost petite—barely five feet tall. She wore her coffee-colored hair brutally short, in a buzz cut that emphasized her sharp cheekbones. She tended to run around in jeans and tank-tops, which showed off her smoothly muscled legs and arms.

Most arresting of all, she had a sharp, fox-like face, with a pointed chin and glaring green eyes. Cat green. And some people described them as poison green.

A striking woman who moved just a little too quickly, who seemed a little too strong for her size. A small woman who ate two steaks a night, just about every night. And multiple raw eggs for breakfast.

Yes. Something wrong. Even if you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

Cain was pondering this phenomenon as the mugger, who was over a foot taller and several pounds heavier, got a good look at her eyes, dropped the knife, and fled. She hadn’t even had to say anything. She had just looked at him.

She bent and picked the knife up off the street, wary of some tourists stepping on it and hurting themselves, snapped off the blade, and dropped both pieces into a nearby trash can.

She’d been back on-Cape for just a couple of days and already some idiot tried to mug her? On the Cape?

She had decided long ago that she would never fit in—except, of course, with the Pack, and what else mattered?—so why bother trying? It’s not like the monkeys ever paid attention. They stayed away from her or they ignored her. Or they tried to mug her—apparently that was the new thing.

For this reason she had never once left Cape Cod, not in twenty-nine years.

Except once.

Which was why she was in her current predicament.

Antonia, the unbelievably bitchy werewolf (except she was a freak; she never changed . . . she saw the future instead) who had taken off for Minnesota ages ago, had gone missing.

And Michael, their Pack leader, had instantly formed a small group to hunt her up. He had politely invited Cain to join them—except with Michael, a polite request wasn’t really a request at all. And so she had gone.

And seeing all her old friends again, catching up on their lives, she had been amazed to find them all . . . settled. Domesticated, even.

Jon had been bad enough, but then Michael . . . and Derik . . . and Brendan . . . they were all happily mated and having cubs, for God’s sake.

And they had grown up together, had been cubs together, and had sworn not to settle down before age thirty. Now they were all settled, and she was the only single one, and damned if her competitive streak wasn’t kicking in. Now she had until her thirtieth birthday to find a mate.

In other words, she had twenty-two days.

Cain irrationally blamed the entire thing on the vampire queen, because if she had been able to keep her house in order, Cain would never have been forced to face certain facts she’d been successfully ignoring by living in Provincetown . . . as far from Wyndham Manor as she could get without actually leaving the Cape.

So the hunt was on. Time to find a Pack member who needed a mate and didn’t mind a quickie wedding.

How she was going to do this, she had no idea. Thus, the late-night stroll to clear her head. The only man in her life so far had been the mugger.

Stupid vampire queen.

Chapter 2

I need to find a mate,” she announced to her oldest friend, Saul, who froze with a forkful of clam linguine halfway to his mouth. “Right now.”

“And you’re, uh, telling me why?”

“Because you know a lot of guys, and I don’t. You’ve got to help me hook up.”

Her only single friend blinked at her as he chewed his pasta. She had known him forever—they had been babies in the crib together, their mothers had been best friends—and they always told each other everything.

When he’d left the Cape after they graduated high school she had been afraid he would never return, but they’d stayed in touch with weekly phone calls and after he got his degree in engineering from (of all places!) the University of Wisconsin, he had come back and settled into a job at Excel Engineering. Within five years he was the number two man there.

It didn’t surprise her. Saul had always been brilliant around machines and gears and things. It was people who gave him trouble. He had a tendency to stammer when nervous or angry, didn’t seem to know what to do with his long arms and legs at parties, and, in short, was a classic beta male.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t pretty cute, because he was. Tall and lean, with a shock of black hair that tended to fall into his eyes at inopportune moments, and chocolate brown eyes. At least he had stuck to their deal, because otherwise some bim would have snatched him up ages ago. He’d be a great husband for some lucky woman. Hmm. Maybe after she was settled, she’d think about fixing him up with somebody. Problem was, he was her only real friend, she didn’t really